V1-GP Sim Racing Pedals – New Video

V-Racing has released a new video of their impressive V1-GP pedals in action, showing the pedals in action with iRacing in their VRS-P1 Racing Simulator.

Made in co-operation with ECCI, the V1-GP pedals have been designed specifically with the low sitting position in simulators and open wheelers. Made of very durable materials, the pedals feature ECCI’s ultra-realistic PMBII Stage 3 racing brake that mimics a real break as pedal resistance increases with increased pressure.

Do real F1 pedals only travel like half an inch? Seems very odd to me given how sensitive the throttle is. How could you accurately dole out the throttle without a reasonable amount of travel?

http://www.facebook.com/derek.peatt Derek Peatt

Hej, the throttle travel is more than the pedal travel, approximately 25mm. Check out the picture, you can see the difference in travel between the throttle and the brake.

Philip Samuelson

Here’s my problem with these… I’ve heard that to slow an F1 car, the drivers have to put hundreds and hundreds of pounds of pressure on the pedal. I was really hoping for the price of these pedals that it would appear as though they simulated that type of effort needed to slow the car. It looks too easy to hit the brake pedal… Obviously this is mere speculation on my part, maybe he is putting a lot of pressure on it but I just can’t see it.

Either way… they look damn cool!

-Blacker.

Niels Heusinkveld

I’m not objective as I am also guilty of selling expensive pedals, though at 800 euro mine seem cheap compared! I also doubt I see a lot of brake pedal force, but I do see some flex of the entire thing, and a very very short travel on the pedals. They don’t appear to be working much like real pedals. To each her / his own, but I don’t see where the 1300 euro is going..

Philip Samuelson

Niels, which pedals were yours again? I’m going to save up and buy some good ones eventually, I was looking at CST but I’ll definitely give yours a look.

I do need to upgrade my shifter first though… My G25 shifter is double shifting on sequential mode.

I heard recently it’s about 300-350 lbs of force on the brakes in an F1 car!

http://www.facebook.com/derek.peatt Derek Peatt

A real F1 driver needs to apply 70-100kg of force (155-220 lbs). The thing is that the real driver is experiencing 3-5 g’s during braking, which is being directly translated to the brake pedal… So with a simulator that’s sitting still, we are not talking about 70-100kg of direct force from driver, we are talking about much less.

http://www.facebook.com/derek.peatt Derek Peatt

Hej, Derek from V-Racing here. The brake pedal is very hard. It gets
progressively harder in the short 13mm travel. By the end of the
travel, it is nearly impossible to press the brake any further.

http://www.facebook.com/derek.peatt Derek Peatt

Again, in real F1, the drivers have G-forces helping them to create extra pressure on the pedals.

I assure you, the V1-GP brake is not “easy” to push on. If you notice in the video, at some points I am holding the pedal about maybe 5mm from maximum for a second or 2. I am able to hold the pedal there because I am applying a certain amount of pressure. When I increase pressure alot, the pedal immediately comes to with 3mm of maximum travel. Max pressure is just a few mm more, but it requires a massive amount of pressure to get there.

Look at some of the other posts on this page, I hope that I have explained how these brakes work and why they are so realistic.

Ghoults

Let’s play some doctor engineering games here for a sec:

Let’s assume the driver exerts force on the brake pedal in two ways
a) using his muscles (Fa) and
b) using the weight of his own body parts (basically the “free” unsupported weight of his leg below knee level) (Fb)

So the total force on brake pedal is T = Fa + Fb. Let’s take an example. A car slows down at 4g deceleration. To achieve that deceleration a force (T) of 120kg (~1200N) is required on the brake pedal.

The foot part of the driver that helps the driver to press the brake pedal (Fb) is worth of Fb= 10kg*4*9.82m/s2=393N (or 40kg). In other words that part of his leg weighs 10kg and at 4g t basically weighs 40kg.

This does assume that most of the forces generated by muscles are generated by muscles in the leg and not by the muscles of the ankle for example. I have no idea how much of this brake force is generated by what muscles so the actual number can be almost anything between 80kg to almost 120kg even at under 4g. If most of the brake force comes from the ankle muscles then the “helping effect” of g-forces is really small.

Niels Heusinkveld

The only ‘free’ braking G force is from aerodynamic drag, which may have a short peak of about 1G in F1 cars but a lot less as you move down the ranks. The rest of the G is by brake pedal application.

Imagine a side view of a driver, there is always an angle between lower and upper leg. If the body was to move forward, the knee joint would just hinge. The weight of the body is restrained by the belts. The upper leg is restrained to a fair degree as it starts at the pelvis which is part of the body restrained with the belts, and the front of the seat creating an angle for your upper leg. I don’t think G forces will be able to ‘straighten’ your upper leg by itself a whole lot.

The mass of lower leg and foot will try and pull the upper leg forward from the aero drag G forces, but with the afforementioned restraints, you certainly can’t count with a full weight leg as the knee is more or less kept in position from the seat belts and seat.

If your lower leg is at a 45 degree angle (i.e. not in a F1 type high nose car..) then the aero drag brake G force would want to pull your lower leg horizontal, which will cause a slight ‘free’ pedal application force.

I think your example of 40kg is still excessive, but you are very much right, that would still leave 60 or 80kg in some cases.

In sims you push yourself back into the seat more than in real life because of the G forces, so having less than purely ‘realistic’ brake pedal travel can certainly feel better, as long as it is force / pressure sensitive, it doesn’t matter too much and driver preference is fine, whatever the driver feels good with. I’d like to have a range though, say from 13 to 39mm at least!

Ghoults

The 4g number was just pure random number. My example was purely for F1 car though 🙂http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/1295/cockpitf1.jpg
So the lower part of the leg is almost perpendicular with the brake pedal. Naturally for any other type of car this is not true :). But in that case with 4g my example imho is relatively descriptive imho.

Niels Heusinkveld

Absolutely, however if 1G is aero drag, the other 3G must come from human brake pedal effort! So I think 1G of your example is correct and you’d have 10kg 🙂

Ghoults

Nope. The source of the various parts of the g-forces does not matter at all. If the car (F1 car for example) is decelerating at 4g then that 4g is the relevant deceleration number you must use in your calculations. No matter if 1g or 2g is caused by aero drag or rolling resistance your body will still feel all those 4g and all those 4g will also be felt in your braking foot ;).

Niels Heusinkveld

Possibly yeah, I’m confused now. But we do agree, it takes a lot of pedal effort regardless of exactly how much (or how little) the G forces help 😛

http://www.facebook.com/derek.peatt Derek Peatt

This all brings us back to the original discussion – the V1-GP brake is a very hard brake and just because the video doesn’t look like an olympic leg press competition doesn’t mean that they aren’t realistic : )

Anyway, Thanks for the interesting reading!

Anonymous

I too am concerned about the flex of the whole unit as well. I am speaking from valid experience that I will share with you. I have a cockpit(s) that have an F1/OpenWheel sitting position where the brake application is from a horizontal position. This position enables you to put extreme high load pressures on your brake pedal. It is an ideal position for load cells since you are able to brake using muscle memory with varied pressures that makes your braking applications so very consistent (and makes driving all the more fun and exciting in my opinion) in all driving/racing/track circumstances. Another thing that I will share with you, to ease your worries, is that pedal travel is not very important, if even at all, for load cell/horizontal push braking. When you are driving/racing you are going by leg push load feel (and overtime, subsequent muscle memory). In fact the more pedal travel (after a certain increase) you have, the less consistent your braking is. Believe me, muscle pressure application and memory trumps pedal distance travel when it comes to braking application and consistency. What IS done to tune/dial in these types of pedals is the pressure adjustment, and not so much pedal travel. This way it can be adjusted and customized to the driver’s/simmer’s leg strength abilities. Not everyone can push like an F1 or Indy star, but with the pressure adjustment ability it will feel exactly the same. eg. your 80-100% push application feel will be the same as to the racing star’s 80-100%. What pedal’s do I use that I can share with you all about this? I use Todd Cannon’s CST F1 pedals. I have very little pedal travel dialed in them, this after many hours (countless) of experience with them. What is important is to eliminate flex by having them solidly mounted. This creates a feeling of confidence and trust in your braking and adds to the braking consistence. Remember it is all about feel and not movement. The only movement should come from the pedal travel and not the flex. The other plus to the CST F1s and these V1-GP ECCIs is their compactness. They fit well into my Hyperstimulator chassis. The final plus to the CST F1s are their various custom adjustments and settings and their BULLET PROOF reliability! Hopefully these V1-GPs will be the same overall. Thank you.

http://www.facebook.com/derek.peatt Derek Peatt

I am totally with you about your comments on pedal travel. We have also tested this alot, with real race car drivers. There should not be excessive amount of pedal travel from the low “F1” sitting position. In addition, if the pedal travel is too much, your leg and foot will get fatigued fast and you will lose consistency.

There really is more brake travel in cars, even F1 cars. Youtube has a few onboards of single seaters and everytime there is far more travel than these sim pedals have. A bit less than realistic can feel great, 13mm may even feel great, but its not realistic. Danica especially has a load of throttle travel as well.

G forces and their effect on brake pedal effort has been discussed. It may help a tad, perhaps the weight of your lower leg, but certainly not a lot. You still have to tension your legs in order to build up brake pedal force. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some real GP2 teams and drivers, and its obvious, they brake bloody damn hard, 100kg is probably not always enough. G’s barely barely help, probably not at all.

I don’t think it is so good to compare steel Indy brakes (as it was in 2009) to carbon F1 brakes. Carbon brakes have much more bite than steel brakes… Carbon brakes react immediately, and steel brakes don’t. I don’t know how good it is to compare to 10 year old F1 cars either, but anyway, alot of this conversation has to do with driver preference.

He has only half of his foot on the brake. The other half is on the gas pedal, So I don’t know how much force he is applying to the brakes.

Every driver has different preferences to hard or soft brake, amount of pedal travel, etc. V1-GP’s are very realistic and we have also worked/tested with pro drivers. ECCI has many many years of experience and have engineered the pedal devices so that they will be realistic.